The About.com urban legends forum has a thread going about auto-urine therapy, which translates into 'drinking your own urine'. Is there really a thriving urine-drinking subculture? Well, yes. As the poster points out, all you have to do is google 'drinking your own urine' and you get all kinds of hits. The reason urine-drinking has so many fans is that it's supposed to offer numerous health benefits, including improving the immune system, giving you nice skin, acting great as a gargle if you have gum disease, and having very powerful anti-aging properties. I think I've mentioned before somewhere on my site that I have personal experience with this urine-drinking subculture. NOT that I've ever drunk the stuff myself (and I definitely never plan to). But I do have a relative who, according to family scuttlebutt, used to do it. She was into all the new-age, alternative medicine stuff like that. In her defense I have to say that she's now approaching 90 and is still in excellent health. In fact, she could probably pass for a sixty-year old. So maybe there's something to it (though I've still got no plans to try it out). I'm actually going to her house on Christmas day for dinner. I don't plan to sample the apple juice in her fridge.

I remember seeing an Indian Yogi on the old Merv Griffin show, years ago. The yogi claimed that he drank a cup of his own urine every day, and it came out clear after a while. Merv about barfed. Oprah also had a urine-themed show a year or so ago, and she, too was aghast at the concept of urine drinking, but seemed fascinated at the standard of normal urine color. See also, the opening theme of the film WaterWorld, in which Kevin Costner filters, and the drinks his own urine. I'd prefer to think it's better to be pissed off than pissed in, myself. Ugh.

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Sat Dec 18, 2004 at 04:12 PM

I dont know about drinking the stuff but I do know that it was used as cleaning solution by some watchmakers during wwii and earlier when normal chemical based solutions were in short supply. In a shop everybody would contribute into a bucket and I'm told, made for an excellent, if somewhat smelly, cleaner...

Posted by Paul de Goutiere on Sat Dec 18, 2004 at 05:03 PM

I had an uncle who was a coal miner. In 1958, there was a major accident and he, along with 6 fellow miners, was trapped 15,000 ft. underground for 7 days before being rescued. Dozens of miners died. After the first few days they were dying of thirst and resorted to drinking their own urine to survive. It's amazing what people will do when they have to. Why would anyone do this when they don't?

Geez, you people are so judgmental... You're going on about how disgusting it would be, and you haven't even tried it. I don't think it would taste very good with the high ammonia content and all, but (provided it's fresh) it's cleaner than most water you drink.

Posted by John in Seattle on Sun Dec 19, 2004 at 05:44 AM

I've also heard of it being used as a cleanser, but not straight from the body to the sponge...It's age a bit before being used to clean. I would have to think it's the ammonia they're after. I thought ammonia wasn't safe to drink.

Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Sun Dec 19, 2004 at 10:22 AM

Urine is nearly sterile when it leaves the body. In the absence of contagious infection, it picks up minute quantities of normal, everyday pathogens as it flows past internal and external body parts, urethra, etc, you get the point. It will serve as a culture medium for the growth of bacteria acquired thus, but mainly acquired from the surface, and other contents, of whatever container it is filled into. This is why we put acidic blue stuff, etc, in our flush toilets - to retard that growth, besides perfume our sense of smell. Only freshly excreted urine is consumed by some Hindu 'holy men', and the sorts, usually as a first drink of the day. Muhatma Gandi is said to have started each day with a glass of his own warm urine. He felt it put a certain "perspective" to the beginning of his daily activities.

Posted by stork in the spiracles of space on Sun Dec 19, 2004 at 04:52 PM

"Urine is cleaner than most water you drink." Where do you get your water?
"Urine is nearly sterile when it leaves the body." Does this mean we don't have to wash our hands after going to the bathroom?
Correct me if I'm wrong. Our bodies produce urine as a form of waste, right? I take that to mean, the body does not want and cannot use it anymore.

Its kind of hard to argue to hard against urine drinking when as a nation we drink so much bovine gland product. We actually take the liquid that comes from the underside of a cow and drink it happily, but drinking our own urine, which is like swallowing your own spit, is seen a gross.

Posted by Oscar on Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 01:51 PM

Milk is different. It's produced for the singular purpose of nourishment. Also, I buy pasturized milk. Spit has a purpose also...it's not a waste product. It is created to help inside your mouth. Urine is being EXPELLED. Your body is trying to get rid of it. If you 'hold it' for too long, you can get very sick!

I'm sure most of us would try drinking urine if we were trapped in a mine, lost in the desert, stranded on a mountaintop, or otherwise threatened with immediate death from dehydration and had no other liquid available, but vountarily supplementing one's diet with urine is another question. It probably won't hurt you, but I don't know of any proof it would help, either.

Posted by Big Gary C in Dallas, Texas on Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 04:26 PM

You wash your hands after urinating due to bacteria traveling from a near by area...clothing, walking and such tend to move things around down there and it wouldn't be uncommon to find e-coli around the urinary area. That's why woman are taught you wipe from front to back; guys are left to figure that one out themselves.

Posted by Evan in USA on Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 04:27 PM

That does it. Now I'm pissed

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 08:46 PM

Eat your own boogers as well. Seems I read an article about that. I'm certain the next article I read is going to tout the benefits of flinging your own crap and picking parasites off your dog and eating them.

Posted by Ralph on Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 09:58 PM

hey i heard that drinking your own pee wee is good as well, (once glass a day the article said). but thats not the worst, famous cartoonist robert crumb (keep on truckin) has a brother named max crumb who dated a girl who ate her own poopie, by the time max found out he said it had been processed so many times it looked like chocolate moose

Posted by joe odd on Tue Dec 21, 2004 at 08:40 AM

long time ago I had a book about Tibetan medicine.
Interesting enough most popular ingredient in their remedies is 4 year old boys urine (like 30% percent of all recipes)

Posted by Loxx on Tue Dec 21, 2004 at 12:12 PM

Some of you folks really seem like whizzes on the subject, as there seems to be a steady stream of comments on urine. A lot of people would void this thread completely, not seeing some of the comments urea here. The French would say "Oui, oui, void that subject", and pass altogether. Let us spray.

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Tue Dec 21, 2004 at 03:23 PM

I'm the only one here daring enough to have tried it! Urine tastes like chicken broth.

Posted by John on Tue Dec 21, 2004 at 09:40 PM

Drinking urine is a sensible part of certain mushroom rituals, as the psychoactive agent (but not the nauseating parts) of the fly-agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) survives metabolic processing for up to five ingestions. Hence the line of the Rig-Veda, "Full-bellied the priests piss the sacred Soma." It won't work for ordinary psilocybin magic mushrooms, however.

Posted by Eivind on Wed Dec 22, 2004 at 12:33 AM

Damn. And all I have are ordinary psilocybin magic mushrooms.

Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Thu Dec 23, 2004 at 02:59 PM

My puppy eats his own poo.

Posted by jack on Fri Dec 24, 2004 at 09:55 PM

"Say there boy, you gonna drive me to drinkin', some Hot Pee whether clear or stinkin" From the classic by Commander Coldpee and The Lost Planet Amen, "Hot Pee Drinkin" ...yuch

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Sun Dec 26, 2004 at 03:21 PM

It got real cold here last night... How cold was it? Well, I peed on the electric fence, and it froze solid immediately. I was stuck until dawn, when the electricity thawed out and shocked me loose... My zipper caught on fire, which I then used to relight the woodstove... I'm going to stand very near it to thaw things out... I'll keep you fence-posted

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Mon Dec 27, 2004 at 12:22 PM

I saw an article about storing pee...if you pee in a container & keep it, it will grow bacteria if you don't put it in the fridge.

Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Wed Dec 29, 2004 at 01:10 PM

Umm for those people who don't even understand what urine is, keep your uneducated opinions to yourself!
Urine is filtered blood, when ever you consume a liquid it is absorbed into your blood stream. Your body then filters that liquid and you pee it out. That doesn't mean that its a waste material, its just that your body has a filtering process that makes it so that you are capable of drinking your own urine. If you drank your urine enough and kept refiltering it it would eventually pee out clear, which is probably the most sterile liquid you can find. Urine has been proven to help treat hundreds of ailment. About its toxicity, its completelty sterile unless you have some type of bladder infection.

Posted by LOSERS on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 03:58 AM

Dear LOSERS, you need not re-drink your pee many times over in order to achieve a "clear" pee as you put it. The color of your pee is an immediate reflection of the amount of good old H20 CURRENTLY in the system. Here's a little test for ya that'll prove my point. Go for a good while (most of a day or so) without intaking any liquids... eventually your going to need to urinate... which will be anywhere from a deep golden to a light brown even...(a result of dehydrating so to speak) after you note this go and have yourself 6 or 8 beers or glasses of water or even iced tea... whatever you prefer. After an adequate amount of time... say a couple of hours or so... you'll have yourself another pee which can and will be significantly lighter in shade (due to the amount of H20 passing directly through your system) if not clear all together. Your sort of on the right track thinking that pee is filtered blood, but that's not 100% correct and this little experiment should allow you to learn this. You can change the color of your pee from gold to clear and get it back to gold all in about the span of a day or so... it all depends on your bodies H20 needs and wants.

Posted by Mark-n-Jen in Midwest USA on Wed Jan 12, 2005 at 08:23 PM

i have done for the past 17 years urine therapy, sorry for bad english i am italian. I am now 66 years old and all i can say is that i am in good health and i look younger than 66. i hope this will help me for better aging.
it's not gisgusting actually, it's just a practise. many medicines are way more terrible.

Posted by ennio in italy on Tue Feb 15, 2005 at 01:06 PM

Water-soluble nutrients generally enter your body, at which point some of them are absorbed, and then leave again. Only those which your body needs at the particular time while the water-soluble nutrients are in your body are actually used. Everything else is filtered out of your blood and leaves. So chances are, putting them back into your body will be of some nutritional value. However, I see no logical reason why you couldn't just get those nutrients from their original source. Bacteria will, after a brief time, interact with urine, causing it gain a smell (this is roughly the same thing that causes perspiration to smell), and ammonia is produced, which is probably not entirely safe to drink, even though it's in small quantities. Also, on a largely unrelated note, despite the fact that urea is a good source of nitrogen for plants, urine, being mostly salt water, will usually end up dehydrating and killing plants instead.